A techno‐economic assessment of biomass co‐firing in Czech Republic, France, Germany and Poland

Abstract

Biomass co-firing with coal can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and can act as a low-cost stepping-stone for developing biomass supply infrastructures. This paper presents a technoeconomic assessment of the biomass co-firing potential in coal-fired boilers in Czech Republic, France, Germany and Poland. The current coal power plant infrastructure is characterized by means of geographic location of the coal power plants, installed boiler capacity, type of boiler technology and year of commissioning, as extracted from the Chalmers Power Plant Database. The assessment considers type of boiler technology, type of biomass, co-firing fraction, implementation costs, breakeven prices for co-firing and an alkali index to determine the risk of high-temperature corrosion. The main factors affecting the co-firing potential are the biomass price, carbon price and alkali index. Results indicate that the total co-firing potential in the four countries is around 16 TWh year −1 , with the largest potential from a conversion perspective in Germany, followed by Poland. Biomass co-firing with coal is estimated to be competitive at biomass prices below 13 € MWh input −1 when the carbon price is 20 € t −1 CO 2 . On average, 1 TWh of electricity from biomass co-firing substitutes 0.9 Mt of fossil CO 2 emissions.

Development of Renewable Energy Sources in the Context of Threats Resulting from Low-Altitude Emissions in Rural Areas in Poland: A Review

“…In Poland, the greatest hopes related to the use of renewable energy are associated with biomass. In the literature, there are many detailed studies in this scope, which describe, for example, high-temperature gasification in a flow reactor [44], integrated technologies for the production of fuels and energy from biomass, agricultural waste and other waste [45], as well as technical and economic aspects of biomass co-firing processes, including thermo-ecological analysis of the costs of energy cogeneration and polygeneration systems [46,47].…”

Selected Aspects of Combustion Optimization of Coal in Power Plants

“…The number indicates the maximum amount of steam generated under full boiler load Mg/h. The boiler is fired with fine coal and is equipped with two independent movable scale grates 2.5 m wide each [24]. Parallel technological auxiliary devices cooperate with the OR boiler: Primary and secondary air fan, slag screw conveyors, cyclone dust collectors, extractor fan, coal bunkers and carburizing devices [25].…”

Experimental characterization of biomass–coal fuel mixtures

“…Nowadays, the exacerbated problem of climate change and atmospheric pollution necessitates the application of technologies for decreasing greenhouse gases and toxic emissions from power generating facilities [6,7] and vehicle operation [8][9][10][11]. One approach to the solution is applying coal and biomass co-firing energy generation [12,13]. It should be noted that joint thermal processing can also be considered in other applications, including liquid fuel production [14].…”

“…Many investigations were carried out on co-firing for the benefit of the power generation industry [12,13,[16][17][18]. For instance, the experimentation is the partnership of Common Purpose Institute, the University of Florida, and the U.S. Department of Environment [19].…”